Rise of the Wang Clan: Starting with a Portable Farm

Chapter 190: Five Years

Green Bull Market, Wang Family Ridge.

Five years had passed since the great war.

The war had raised Wang Hao’s standing again. He used that momentum to press ahead with reforms.

He was not changing rules blindly. The reforms brought real benefits to clan members, leaving them little reason to object.

Holding spirit stones idle served no purpose. They needed to be spent—or invested.

Wang Hao saw his support for the Wang family as an investment. When it grew stronger, it would support him in return.

He could never seize a mountain with a third-tier spirit vein alone, but a clan with dozens of Foundation Establishment cultivators might do so.

The benefits of cultivating on a high-grade Spirit Vein were immense, and Wang Hao intended to secure them.

His earlier policy rewarded families for children with spiritual roots.

It gave twenty spirit stones for a child with five spiritual roots, thirty for four, fifty for three, and at most two hundred for two. A heavenly spiritual root would earn a thousand, though none had appeared.

Wang Hao doubled these figures overnight.

Marriages and concubinage increased, and the family seemed to celebrate weddings almost daily. The granduncle, now in his nineties with little hope of further cultivation, took ten more mortal wives and concubines, hoping to leave spirit stones for his descendants.

Rewards for other clan tasks doubled as well.

Guarding one mu of spirit fields had once paid three spirit stones a year. A mu yielded roughly two hundred jin of rice in two harvests, and after seeds and other costs, earned only a dozen or so stones. Three stones was not a low wage. A low-level cultivator could tend ten mu without losing much cultivation time and earn thirty stones a year.

But Wang Hao raised the pay to 6 Spirit Stones.

The new six-stone wage gave the guards nearly half of each field’s profit.

Between base pay, performance bonuses, and welfare, a Qi Refining disciple now earned over 100 Spirit Stones a year. The sharpest among them pulled in 200 or 300.

Flush with cash, they bought Magical Artifacts and Pills. Their personal strength soared, and by extension, so did the Wang Clan’s.

Wang Hao also copied the sect’s methods and his own experience in Green Bull Market by assigning clan tasks to give cultivators experience. Rewards included contribution points, spirit stones, magic tools, and pills.

Some clan resources grew scarce, so Wang Hao supplied much of what was needed from his farm.

Wang Yanzhao spent these years concentrating on alchemy to earn a Foundation Establishment Pill for Li Dexi. Wang Hao and a few others handled most clan affairs, giving him room to put his reforms into practice.

This slowed development of his farm. It still had only six golden plots. Wang Hao thought the trade worthwhile: he had few high-grade spiritual materials to grow and no urgent need for more golden plots.

Selling produce to the farm shop would give him only numbers in its ledger. Exchanging it with the family gave him real spirit stones, which he could eventually spend on rare goods in Wanxiang City.

Higher pay also made some clan members complacent. Some were content to guard spirit fields; others did no work at all and lived on their clan stipend.

Wang Hao required each cultivator to finish two clan tasks appropriate to their level each year and take a combat task at least once every two years.

A year without tasks brought a warning and halved benefits. Three consecutive years without tasks ended all benefits; continued refusal could lead to expulsion from the clan.

Long seclusion to overcome a bottleneck and other special circumstances could be excused if reported in advance. But anyone whose cultivation or craft failed to improve afterward had to make up the missed tasks. This closed an easy loophole.

Having a child with spiritual roots excused two years of tasks. The Fourteenth Granduncle had earned more such exemptions than he could use. If they could be inherited, his sons might never need to work either; Wang Hao promptly closed that loophole.

For those who worked, the rewards were lucrative.

In the past, many clansmen had no magic tool at all, and owning one offensive tool was already fortunate. Now almost everyone had two, one for attack and one for defense. Some had three or four. Pills had become a common aid to cultivation.

Wang Wenjiang was a standout of this new era.

A 24-year-old with Three Spiritual Roots, he rode the wave of reform to reach the eighth layer of Qi Refining. Foundation Establishment before 30 was a real possibility.

One afternoon, he arrived at Wang Hao’s cave dwelling, sending a transmission talisman and waiting respectfully outside.

When Wang Hao emerged, Wang Wenjiang hurried forward, grinning.

“Greetings, Fifth Brother! You look even more handsome than when I saw you a few days ago!”

Wang Hao shook his head, smiling. The kid was glib, but his charisma allowed him to mix with anyone.

“You’re here for the Puppet Beast? Task done?”

Wang Hao offered puppet beasts as rewards for some tasks, both to practice his craft and to protect clan members. A hundred-year-old Yin Purple Pine could supply the main material for a first-tier puppet. After obtaining seeds from the Si family, he planted one mu in his farm’s black soil. Every two and a half years it yielded dozens of trees.

A first-tier puppet was of little use to Wang Hao but an excellent helper for a Qi Refining cultivator. A spirit beast needed care and could be costly if injured or killed; a puppet ran on a few spirit stones, could scout, lure and fight beasts, and cost less to maintain than a spirit beast, and could be repaired if not too badly damaged.

Wang Hao did not need to handle ordinary puppet repairs. The family had trained novice puppet makers. They could make only low-grade first-tier puppets, not the more useful high-grade ones, but they could repair damage.

“Not yet, Fifth Brother. I came to ask for your help,” Wang Wenjiang said.

He explained his situation.

Wang Wenjiang wanted to reach Foundation Establishment, but earning enough contribution points for a pill through ordinary tasks would take decades, even with the new rewards. He had few close relatives from whom he could borrow points, so he had set his sights on hunting demon beasts.